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Jewish Federation presents discussion of antisemitism in Canada
By BERNIE BELLAN On Wednesday, October 14, the Jewish Federation of Winnipeg presented a conversation between Rabbi Matthew Leibl and CIJA (Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs) CEO Shimon Koffler Fogel titled: “Antisemitism in Canada: Pushing back against hate”.
In introducting Fogel, Leibl made the following observation about his not having been exposed to antisemitism during the six years he spent as a radio show host prior to his becoming a rabbi at the Shaarey Zedek: “In the six years I spent on the air I never experienced anything like it (antisemitism).”
That observation served as a prelude to Leibl’s asking Fogel, “How familiar do you think people are with antisemitism?”
Fogel responded: “I am increasingly uncomfortable with the term ‘antisemitism’. Our concern is hatred directed toward the Jews…There has been a steady increase in unabashed hatred toward Jews…The overwhelming majority of antisemitic animus toward Jews is rooted in ignorance…Anything born out of ignorance can be healed with education, but what we really have to be concerned about is the 20 percent of antisemitism that comes out of real hatred toward Jews, not ignorance.”
Leibl asked: “How do we balance the distinction between antisemitism and antiZionism?”
Fogel: “I reject the understanding that ‘everything has changed as a result of the conflict between Israel and Gaza’ ”(last May, which led to a marked upsurge in antisemitic behaviour, especially on the internet).
“What has been happening is an effort to redefine how we think about society.”
Fogel went on to explain that Israel makes for an easy target, especially for those on the left. He referred to Naomi Klein (“Progressive” hero who has often criticized Israel) as having remarked, in explaining why so many on the left attack Israel when there are so many other countries that have far worse records when it comes to human rights: “Israel is the low hanging fruit.”
Fogel added that “Israel is the proxy for the Jewish people. To treat differently the aspirations of the Jewish people is antisemitic.”
He referred to instances this past May in Montreal when Hamas supporters would drive through Jewish neighbourhoods of Montreal in their cars, shouting “Hitler didn’t finish the job” or “We’re coming to get you.”
There is “an artificial distinction between the Jewish people and the Jewish state,” Fogel suggested.
Leibl asked: “Are there tools we can use when tension is raised?”
Fogel: “We have to separate things into two categories: What we used to do – which was target certain political groups in an effort to win support for Israel and what we need to do more of, which is recognize that we actually have a second target group within our own constituency” (members of the Jewish community who are quite critical of Israel).
Turning to the subject of social media, Fogel had this to say: “There is a sense of inadequacy how to answer (antisemitic posts) on social media.” Again, he pointed to divisions within the Jewish community itself, saying “We’ve become fractured, we’ve become polarized. A community that isn’t unified has lost its effectiveness.”
Still, Fogel wanted to emphasize that it is “unity – not uniformity” that the Jewish community has lost. “We’ve lost the principle of consensus,” he observed.
Yet, in responding to antisemitic social media, Fogel noted the challenges that pertain to how small the Jewish community is worldwide, in comparison with the Muslim community, for instance (although he was also quick to note that by no means are all Muslims antisemitic).
“We have to develop a greater facility to respond to social media,” Fogel said, including doing the following:
We have to “educate” – something that is a result of “an ignorant multi-generational deficit”.
We have to draw a “distinction between activism and advocacy”. In doing that, we must enter into an “exercise of valuing the principles of inclusion and mutual self-respect.”
Leibl followed up Fogel’s suggestion, asking “So, who’s the ‘we’ who does that?”
Fogel suggested that “Federations are the key hubs – maybe not the main points of contact for Jews, but the best places to provide resources” for combating antisemitism.
Yet, as much as antisemitism is certainly a problem in Canada, Fogel conceded that “the vast majority of social media posts originate outside of Canada” – which makes it very hard to counter, even if there were some government regulation of social media in this country
“We’ve called on the federal government to introduce an online anti-hate strategy,” Fogel said, but Canada alone isn’t going to be able to do it.”
“We’re going to have to generate a global consensus so that posts generated in Iran and which are seen in the U.K. (for example)” can be regulated in the U.K.
When it comes to hatred toward Jews on social media, moreover, Fogel pointed out that “both extremes (left and right) are toxic to the Jewish community. Unless there’s a coercive element imposed upon them,” he added, “they’re not going to change.”
However, there’s another element to trying to control social media, Fogel said, which is “that in order to have an impact we actually have to surrender control” – not to governments, but to “influencers”.
In this new world of social media it is the importance of “influencers” we have to acknowledge, Fogel argued: people who don’t “create” content on social media, “they report” what others have produced.
“We have to reach out to the real influencers,” Fogel suggested. He pointed to the influence someone like Lebron James has – with his “37 million followers on Twitter”.
For someone like Lebron James (and if you’re reading this and don’t have a clue who Lebron James is, he’s an American basketball player), “the most important influence Lebron James is going to have isn’t what he tweets, it’s what he retweets,” according to Fogel.
“The best way to get control is to give up control” to young influencers.
Interesting proposition, I suppose. But how the heck are you going to be able to persuade young influencers to take on antisemitism online? Is Kylie Jenner interested in anything more than her latest brand of eye shadow, I wonder? Now, if Bar Rafaeli or Gal Gadot were to join forces with the Kardashians, maybe that would work. Now there’s an idea!
Local News
Ami Hassan returning as owner of Falafel Place
By BERNIE BELLAN In a surprise move – and after more than a six-year absence as owner of Falafel Place (Corydon at Wilton) the legendary Ami Hassan has decided to return as owner of one of Winnipeg’s most famous eateries.
Long known for his sometimes irreverent attitude to his customers, e.g., “If you’re finished, get out!”, Ami decided to return to running Falafel Place after having retired years ago (or so he thought) from running the Corydon Avenue restaurant.
We asked Ami whether he’ll be sending a special invitation to Julia Roberts to come visit him at Falafel Place. He asked again: “Who’s Julia Roberts?” (Just kidding – he really does know how Julia Roberts is.) Read the story how Ami told her to leave the restaurant and come back later at Julia Roberts turned away from Falafel Place
Ami did note that when customers saw him inside the restaurant one recent day as he was getting it ready for the reopening Monday, August 10, over 20 of them came in asking him if he was open already.
We asked Ami whether the menu will be the same as it was when he last ran the place and he said everything will be the same.
Falafel Place will be open 7 days a week from 7 am – 2 pm. Remember, if you’re finished – get out!
Local News
The enormous – but little known role that Sheldon Berney played in the building of the Asper Campus
By BERNIE BELLAN Sheldon Berney passed away on July 28 in Palm Beach, Florida.
While his name may not be all that familiar to many members of Winnipeg’s Jewish community – other than the campus’s theatre having being named for him, at one time Sheldon Berney played an indispensable role in the building of the Asper Community Campus.
Six years ago I interviewed Bob Freedman about how the Asper Campus came about. Bob is one great story teller and if you want to see the entire interview (which is over an hour long, you can see it on YouTube at Freedman 2020 interview.)
The reason I’m harkening back to that interview now is to remind readers of the vital part that Sheldon Berney played in the building of the campus.
In fact, he was the the first president of the Asper Jewish Community Campus Board and, while the Berney Theatre is named for him and his picture adorns the entrance of the campus – along with Marjorie Blankstein’s and Bob Freedman’s, the contribution Sheldon Berney made to the building of the Asper Campus deserves to be recounted.
The story begins in 1986 when Bob Freedman had agreed to become the new executive director of what was then the Winnipeg Jewish Community Council. At the time he was executive director of Legal Aid Manitoba.
As Bob told me during our 2020 interview, “I said: ‘Look the only way I would consider doing that is if there was a commitment by the leadership of the WJCC to move the community forward.’ I had no intention of being a caretaker on a sinking ship.”
At the time, it should be noted, Winnipeg had begun to descend into the kinds of problems that have only been magnified in more recent years, including a deteriorating downtown – where the old YMHA was located, on Hargave – and to where an increasing number of parents were hesitant to send their children. Further, many young people had been leaving the city for better opportunities elsewhere.
Bob wanted to bring together a coalition of partners whose goal would be to develop a strategic plan that would move the Jewish community forward and revitalize it.
The first person he approached to be a part of that group was Marjorie Blankstein. As Bob explained, “I approached her and said ‘Marjorie, you’d be the perfect chair of our long-range planning committee’ and she agreed right on the spot. She didn’t need any convincing and that was May 2nd, 1986.
We then started the process, but we didn’t recruit Sheldon Berney, by the way, until a few years later,” he noted.
As Bob explained, together with Marjorie Blankstein, the two of them set out to assess community support for what had still not been identified as the campus project per se; it was more of a “sounding out” of as many different factions within the community as possible to determine how strong the determination was to move forward with a project that would complete rewrite the Jewish community’s direction.
I asked him during that interview how Sheldon Berney was eventually brought on board as a key member of the team.
Bob said that he didn’t really know Sheldon well, saying “I only met Sheldon once or twice. He was busy running the business. It was called “Reliance Products.'”
Here’s a brief excerpt from Sheldon Berney’s obituary as it appeared in the Globe & Mail that gives some detail about his business career, and his commitment to community service and philanthropy :
“Born to Ada (Loban) and Martin Berney, Sheldon lived an extraordinary life in Winnipeg before retiring to Florida. He built a distinguished career in business, joining his father at Reliance Products, which he expanded into an internationally respected manufacturer of plastic containers and camping equipment, celebrated for design excellence.
“A pillar of Winnipeg’s Jewish community and dedicated philanthropist, Sheldon chaired the Society of the Plastics Industry, the Manitoba Institute of Management, and the Young Presidents’ Organization. He served on the boards of the YMHA, CJA, and Victoria Hospital and was a core donor to the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. In the 1990s, he chaired the Asper Jewish Community Campus Board, taking immense pride in helping to bring the project to life.”
It was around the time that the idea for the campus project was being formulated that Sheldon Berney had sold Reliance Products, Bob Freedman recounted.
“Sheldon, at that time, was in his 50s and was basically retired,” Bob said.
“Even though he was not well known in the community,” Bob continued, “he had good relationships with people.” Sheldon Berney also socialized with Izzy Asper; they both had properties near each other in Florida, Bob noted.
“They shmoozed around and socialized…and we figured also he had credibility and had time on his hands, so we approached him, we briefed him, and convinced him we would need someone like him to do a job…In terms of how it was done it was a small nucleus of people who were really the movers and shakers on this….We started what was called the long-range planning committee” and Sheldon Berney “started recruiting people to serve on the committee – so we had financial people who were business people – who were ordinary people in the community.” (In fact, the name of the committee evolved to become the “Implementation Committee.”)
“I think we recruited Sheldon around 1989,” Bob recalled.
“There were two things he (Sheldon) said to us (Marjorie and Bob): “He said if I understand how things work with committees and boards – I have no patience for that…I don’t want to come to a ton of meetings. I want to have the authority to move forward and do things…and perhaps we have to spend money and need board approval – I understand that, but I don’t want the politics. I’ve got no patience for that.
“The other thing he said was when the time comes to raise money,” Sheldon said he wanted to check with certain people to see whether they would give their support to the project.
As Bob said (in his own inimitable way): “He didn’t want them to say you’re out of your f….king mind” and Sheldon would have wasted a year or two of his time.
“And Sheldon came back,” Bob said, “and every last one” of the people he had approached, which were about “four or five or six people and all of them said ‘go for it’ – and Sheldon Berney was on board, not only as a key fundraiser, but as someone who was very involved with finding the right location for the campus.
Bob told this somewhat amusing story about what happened when the initial proposal to build a community campus was for it be built at Waverley and Wilkes.
“But there were hydro towers there…and we had a public meeting and the screaming and the yelling that was going on…” and, as Bob explained, someone approached Sheldon and told him to hire someone with a Geiger counter (to measure radiation levels at the proposed site) – and this was already (19)93.” (It’s hard to imagine that the Asper Campus opened only four years later.)
Even though whoever measured the radiation levels at Waverley and Wilkes ultimately reported that there was more radiation “in your kitchen with appliances” than there was radiation from the hydro lines, Sheldon Berney was warned by someone else that “all we need god forbid is one kid in the school gets cancer and you will be dead in the water, so we agreed to move off” the Waverley and Wilkes site.
Once the plan to build at Waverley and Wilkes was dropped the focus turned to the possibility of buying what had been the Fort Osborne Barracks from the province.
Later on, when the fundraising was in full scale, Bob said that Sheldon Berney again played a key role in convincing Izzy Asper to scale back his insistence on having more representatives on the campus board than anyone else. Asper argued that if he puts up “$500,000 he should have 500,000 votes.”
According to Bob, it was Gerry Gray who told Izzy Asper that, in order for the campus project to be a true community project, if someone were to give “$1,000 that could be a really good gift considering their income and that gift is as important, if not more important than your five hundred thousand.”
But, Aper was persistent, Bob said, and one day Sheldon Berney phoned Bob and said Asper “is driving me nuts…so I said ‘Sheldon, I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you suggest to Izzy” that he contribute two million and “at that time two million was a lot of money…and tell him (Asper) he can have two people on the board.” (Bob explained that they were planning a nine-person board so having two representatives on the board would be a significant number, but at the same time the board was envisioned as not having much responsibility: It “would make sure carpets were cleaned, that the taxes were paid, and all that stuff.”
The next day, Bob said, Sheldon Berney met with Izzy and said to him: “Look, we got to put this to bed because I’m not sleeping at night.” Sheldon said to Izzy: “Here’s the deal: Two million bucks – you get two people on the board. He (Asper) says ‘okay.'”
But, as Bob noted, Izzy Asper continued to be very hands-on with the building of the campus and “he would drive Sheldon nuts and he would drive me nuts and he would drive all of us nuts.”
Sheldon Berney continued to play a key role in the campus project throughout its planning and construction. But when you realize that the campus actually went from an idea on paper in as late as 1994 to a fully finished project when it opened in 1997 (although construction continued even after the official opening in the summer of 1997), it’s rather amazing to contemplate how it all came together in such a relatively short period of time.
In an article in The Jewish Post & News published in May 1995 here is what my late brother Matt wrote about the groundbreaking ceremony for what was to become the Asper Campus. Berney, who was master of ceremonies at the ceremony was quoted as saying ” ‘Over the past six years, we’ve talked to people about the campus many times.’ “
The article continued: “The ceremony ended with Berney taking the controls of a huge yellow track excavator and scooping out a big chunk of earth.
“The groundbreaking was a ‘very exciting step’, he added, noting that demolition of some Fort Osborne Barracks buildings and campus construction would start the next week. ‘You’re all here to dream with me about the day in the summer of 1997 when we’ll all be back again to cut the ribbon on a campus that will be a source of pleasure for all of us.’ “
In the photo, Sheldon Berney (left), president, Asper Jewish Community Campus, is with Larry Hurtig, Winnipeg Jewish Community Council president, who is about to present Berney with a certificate of appreciation.
Later, in our September 17, 1997 issue, Matt chronicled the opening ceremonies of the Asper Campus, which were held on Sunday, September 7 of that year.
Again, Sheldon Berney was front and centre, as Matt noted in his report: “Sheldon Berney gazed at the crowd sitting in bridge chairs on the front lawn of the Asper Jewish Community Campus on the warm, sunny day.
” ‘Many times over the past several years, I’ve painted a mental picture of exactly this scene … ‘ the campus president told the crowd.
” ‘… Standing here at the formal dedication ceremony for the Asper Jewish Community Campus, feeling an enormous sense of pride, an enormous sense of accomplishment.’ “
And, because Sheldon Berney was a behind the scenes kind of guy we never really heard a lot of, yet he’s one of three people (the others being Marjorie Blankstein and Bob Freedman himself) to have plaques with their faces on them greeting anyone who walks through the front entrance of the campus we thought it appropriate to pay Sheldon Berney his proper due.
As the inscription on Sheldon Berney’s plaque notes:
The Asper Jewish Community Campus of Winnipeg
The Centre of Life and Learning
Records its sincerest appreciation to
Sheldon Berney
in recognition of his very special efforts
first, as Chair of the Implementation Committee,
and latterly as Chair of the Board of Directors,
for his outstanding leadership in the conception,
fundraising and construction of these facilities
His dedication and style of leadership stand as an
example to all who would serve.
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Scenes from Shalom Square 2026
Shalom Square – the Israel pavilion, is on until Saturday night, August 8. As usual, audiences have been packing the Rady JCC gym to watch entertainment provided by the Chai Folk Ensemble and Kadima Dance Troupe.
(All photos courtesy of Keith Levit)
